The Silver Archer 2️⃣ (Percy Jackson)

05. Inspection Duty

Adira

After breakfast, Percy and I walked down to inspect the cabins. My turn for inspection. Hooray...

His morning chore was to sort through reports for Chiron. But since we both hated our jobs,
we decided to do them together so it wouldn't be so heinous.

We started at the Poseidon cabin, which was just Percy. He'd partly made his bunk bed and straightened the Minotaur horn on the wall, so he gave himself a four out of five.

I made a face. "You're being generous." I used the end of my pencil to pick up an old pair
of running shorts.

He snatched them away. "Hey, give me a break. I don't have Tyson cleaning up after me this summer."

"Three out of five," I said, shaking my head. "Why? Do you want to smell them?" Percy joked.

I made a disgusted face. "Absolutely not!" I laughed, as he tried shoving them in my face.

"Come on, babe, you know you want to-"

"NO, I can smell them from here!" I said, whacking him with a pencil. Accidentally, he landed on top of me, smiling down at me. Both of his arms were guarding me, so I had nowhere to go. "Well, hello there," he said, letting out a chuckle.

I pushed him off of me, rolling my eyes. "You really were a Seaweed Brain in a past life."

We visited the Aphrodite cabin, which of course got a five out of five. The beds were perfectly made. The clothes in everyone's footlockers were color coordinated. Fresh flowers bloomed on the windowsills.

Percy wanted to dock a point because the whole place reeked of designer perfume, but I ignored the comment.

"Great job as usual, Silena," I said.

Silena nodded listlessly. The wall behind her bed was decorated with pictures of Beckendorf. She sat on her bunk with a box of chocolates on her lap, and I remembered that her dad owned a chocolate store in the Village, which was how he'd caught the attention of Aphrodite.

"You want a bonbon?" Silena asked. "My dad sent them. He thought—he thought they might cheer me up."

"Are they any good?" I asked.

She shook her head. "They taste like cardboard."

I didn't have anything against cardboard, so we both tried one. We promised to see Silena
later and kept going.

As we crossed the commons area, a fight broke out between the Ares and Apollo cabins. Some Apollo campers armed with firebombs flew over the Ares cabin in a chariot pulled by two pegasi. Soon, the roof of the Ares cabin was burning, and naiads from the canoe lake rushed over to blow water on it.

Then the Ares campers called down a curse, and all the Apollo kids' arrows turned to rubber. The Apollo kids kept shooting at the Ares kids, but the arrows bounced off.

Two archers ran by, chased by an angry Ares kid who was yelling in poetry: "Curse me, eh? I'll make
you pay! / I don't want to rhyme all day!"

I sighed. "Not that again. Last time Apollo cursed a cabin, it took a week for the rhyming
couplets to wear off."

I shuddered. Apollo was god of poetry as well as archery, and I'd heard him recite in person. I'd
almost rather get shot by an arrow.

"What are they fighting about anyway?" Percy asked.

I ignored him for a second while I scribbled on my inspection scroll, giving both cabins a one out of five.

Finally I said, "That flying chariot."